The best way to store a growing wine collection is to build a home wine cellar. Your wine cellar must be designed to age the wine in the right conditions as it matures, ensuring that the wine develops complexity and does not oxidize .
Building a home wine cellar from scratch may seem like a daunting process, but the first step that proverbially applies to climbing mountains applies to wine cellars, too. Of course, it all starts with collecting the first bottle and eventually finding that your collection has grown so large that you can no longer store it.
A well-insulated home wine cellar can cost many thousands of dollars to build but so can a large refrigerated wine cabinet so often a walk-in home wine cellar is the more economical and cost effective way of storing your wine.
Before you start building your home wine cellar consider the following.
Cellar temperature should be a chief consideration followed by the amount of natural light. Your wine room must be well insulated – extruded polystyrene provides ideal insulation. If you reside in a mild climate it may be possible for you to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.
Wine cellars generall have thick walls. Two-by-six construction will allow for substantial insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at a constant temperature. In an active wine cellar, important factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system.
Temperature fluctuation of more than a few degrees can destroy your wine collection. Small temperature fluctuations from season to season will not damage the wine but those same fluctuations of a daily or weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should stay between 45 and 60 degrees F, and exposure to direct sunlight should be avoided. It is possible to build a wine closet or a wine cupboard at home that will have the required humidity level of between 50% and 80% that is ideal for all types of wines.
Vibration should always be avoided when storing wine; it agitates the bottle and speeds up the chemical processes taking place inside the bottle – and not in a good way.
Vibration is a major issue during the transportation and is the reason winemakers recommend allowing your wine to rest after travel. This is important, too, when you buy wine at a cellar door and also from your wine retailer. Never take the wine home and plan on drinking it without allowing it to rest. In fact, all wine should be put immediately into your cellar.
Remember that it is not only your wine which is valuable; the wine cellar itself will add value to your home. So the larger and better-constructed your cellar, the more the value of your house will increase.
Unless you live in a very cold climate a wine cellar usually provides a lower temperature environment compared with to the surrounding living spaces and therefore must be treated differently in relation to those spaces. Do not attempt to cool a wine cellar by installing a domestic air conditioning unit if your wine cellar requires cooling. Home air conditioning will remove the humidity from the air and will quickly destroy your wines by causing the corks to dry out. There are several brands of wine cellar cooling units available that will cool any size wine cellar. Your wine cellar is a personal statement, and will become one of the most important areas in your home. This is the place where you will indulge your passion for collecting fine wine and where you will display your precious acquisitions. Click here to discover how to build a home wine cellar and, if you have the space, you could try incorporating a bar or a wine tasting area.